Product development

In an innovative company such as Wila, success is naturally highly dependent on the quality of product development. Without getting into specific development success stories, the manner in which effort is devoted to product development is certainly worth discussing.

At Wila, these efforts are made in what we refer to as multi-functional work teams. Work teams in which not only development is represented, but also sales, production planning and production. The last two are included because every ‘innovation’ naturally has to be evaluated from the very beginning with reference to feasibility and reproducibility. What was that phrase we just used – ‘don’t waste energy on useless matters’? Here too, the division according to functional areas proves its effectiveness. No matter what is happening in the plant within the framework of product development or Research and Development, it is always separate from the current activities involved in ‘regular’ production. The managers of the functional areas balance the activities and assign capacity. This establishes clarity for all of the people involved and prevents production schedules from being interrupted.